Episode Eleven:Accountants Living Large

Sitting alone in the next booth was an old woman, dressed in a garish purple, low-cut blouse and seemingly every piece of jewelry she’d ever owned. Travis watched her distribute napkin-wrapped silverware sets to the four corners of her table. Then the menus. Then, after the waitress brought them, four glasses of water. The woman fidgeted with everything again and again, her face drawn tight with worry, as if she feared that the family he assumed would be arriving soon would abandon her to a nursing community in the suburbs if everything wasn’t perfect. Part of him hoped they would. Travis had nothing against her, but her constant nervous attention to the place settings threatened to set him off on a fury-driven rant that would end with him and Oscar being thrown out of the diner. NIt isn’t fair to say that his rage was directed at her. It wasn’t. The fact that he was paying twelve dollars for an omelette and pancakes boiled his blood. The cost to make his entire meal was less than that damned woman likely paid for all of her thrift-store jewelry, and the owners of the diner dared to charge twelve dollars for the lackluster breakfast ensemble. O

It was everything he could do not to leap from his cheaply-upholstered seat and lash out with all of the fury of an Old Testament-style can of whoop-ass. _

Oscar smiled, sitting across from Travis, happily eating a grossly overpriced All-American Burger. He held the burger tenderly with his fingertips, seeming to kiss it, more than bite into it. Had he been paying more attention, Travis would have wondered if he needed to give the two a little privacy. M

But he wasn’t. He could never just sit down and enjoy a moment. E“Yes I could,” Travis muttered into his omelette. He tried to let his mind wander, but it always circled back around to the fact that the extra slice of cheese cost ninety five cents. Ninety five cents. SOscar continued eating his meal. On many occasions he’d said that if a burger doesn’t make your heart nervous it doesn’t deserve to be eaten, and judging from the guilty smile on his face, this was a burger that warranted a state of coronary emergency. The injustice of the cost of extra cheese was so great that Travis felt he would be justified in burning the place to the ground, but… Ultimately, if that was the cost of Oscar’s happiness, then it was worth it. SWhen the waitress passed carrying a loaded tray the hapless old woman flagged her down to let her know that she had food allergies, and to ask whether there was a discount because she was a senior citizen.AOscar choked on his burger and spat out the half-masticated bite. "She has got to be kidding."“Right? She’s still fucking with how the menus align with the silverware!” Oscar stared at Travis, trying to puzzle out what he could possibly have meant before dismissing the entire matter as a lost cause. “No, I mean the Senior menu.”

“What’s wrong with it? There’s less food, so it has less cost to make it, if it’s only a little bit. It’s a sensible thing to do.” Travis took the first bite of his hash browns. He grimaced and added more ketchup and hot sauce - the only way to eat them, in his opinion. G“Oh, what the hell is this world coming to? That has nothing to do with it!”Travis’s loaded fork paused on the trek toward his mouth. “Of course it does. Less manufacturing cost means a margin to pass along to the customers. It’s a better deal than what we’re getting.” “Exactly!” Oscar’s own fork fell to his plate, splashing into the little pool of ketchup. “Why should we get stuck with the extra cost of her being old?”“You’re worth 3.2 Million dollars, what do you care?” “This isn’t about me, or what I’m worth. This is about our entire country, and how we treat people!” Oscar had leaned forward. Leaning on his elbows, he gestured harshly to try to make his point better. “Look at her. She’s had, what, fifty or sixty years to amass some kind of money to her name?” “I’d say closer to seventy five. Either that or she’s a smoker. Then, heh, something like forty five.”“This isn’t funny, Travis.”“Who’s laughing? Clearly not her. She looks like a kicked puppy.”The old woman’s family arrived then. A happy-looking couple with a boy, maybe seven or eight years old and clearly uncomfortable with what he was wearing. The old woman stood and hugged the woman first, before casting a disappointed look at the man. She seemed to forget about the couple entirely as she began doting on the child, who looked for possible escapes. He even looked at Travis, seemingly offering him whatever riches the boy could have offered in exchange for freedom. The old woman seemed happy. E“Oh, fuck her.” Oscar waved his hands as if to clear the metaphorical smoke obscuring his point. “The problem is that we venerate the elderly, who couldn’t bother to put a little bit of money together at any point in their entire lives, and make up for the fact that they haven’t. You’re paying extra for your meal, simply because the senior menu,” he sneered loud enough that the garishly-dressed old woman took notice, “exists. At best, your food is worth ten bucks, but you are being charged Twelve Ninety-Nine, plus tax, and why?” He didn’t wait for a response. “Because of the stupid fucking senior menu.”“Oscar,” Travis began slowly, trying to figure out a way to win the argument and prevent them from being thrown out, “You know that isn’t fair. Her generation had a hard time, they went through a lot.”“Yeah, I hear the Great Depression was rough.”In spite of his best intentions, Travis laughed at that. “Don’t you think that we owe her just a little bit of thanks?”“For what, working to build airplanes during World War Two?”

“You have no idea how old she is, do you?” Travis took another bite of his food, and found that it tasted better when he was defending the old woman, instead of wishing atrocities on her. _

“What do I care? She asked for a senior discount. She is what’s wrong with this country.”Travis looked over Oscar’s shoulder and watched her for a long moment. Her nerves had visibly calmed, though the tight-lipped expression hadn’t gone from her face. In spite of whatever she had been feeling before the arrival of her loved ones she looked to be enjoying catching up with her daughter; she hadn’t let go of her grandson since he’d arrived. H“You’re not even listening to me, are you?” “No.”

"You think I'm wrong, don't you?"

"Yes."Oscar again stared at Travis, trying to decide whether he should be upset by this. “Fair,” he decided, and picked up his burger, this time tearing into it as though he hadn’t eaten in months. They finished their meal in silence, Oscar enjoying his burger and Travis enjoying the little bits of conversation that floated to him from the next table. EHe found it interesting, the bits of her life the old woman decided to share, and what she clearly forced herself to avoid. He wondered what he would talk to his father about, if he got the chance. Not much, likely. Would he talk about Ariel? Or would he stick to the mainstays: politics, religion, and whatever else it took to drive the old man away? In a rare moment of clarity, Travis was honest with himself. He decided he would probably not mention any of these things, and simply avoid his father until the viewing at his funeral. He would play the role of dedicated son until, when everyone else had left, he could finally be honest with the man. RTravis shook himself. “You ready?”“Yeah,” Oscar said around the last mouthful of his burger. “I’ll grab the tip, you grab the check?”

“Yep yep.” Oscar fished a twenty dollar bill out of his wallet, followed by a ten, and threw them on the table. His philosophy had always been that a tip less than 110% was a waste of time. “I’m gonna hit the bathroom. I’ll meet you outside.”Travis took longer than he needed to gather his jacket, put it on, and make his way to the register. He gave the old woman a smile. E“How was everything today?”“It was perfect.”“You had the All-American and the Tex-Mex omelette?”“Yeah.” Travis looked back at the old woman and her until-recently estranged family. “Hey, can I pick up their check, too?”